As the general public continues to increase its willingness to recycle, there are a variety of reasons that would lead to the desire for a container sorting system having improved efficiency. Currently available sorting system are plagued with many shortcomings. Traditional sorting systems use sensing devices which are bulky and have traditionally been configured to sort materials with a conveyor belt as a backdrop. Sensing systems in this configuration receive signals from the conveyor belt as well as from the items to be sorted which can complicate the identification of items. The traditional configuration of sorting systems also has resulted in a significant distance being present between the sensing region and the sorting region of a system. Given that many of the items being sorted are light weight cylindrically shaped bottles, one can imagine the movement of such individual items on the surface of a rapidly moving conveyor belt. Unfortunately, such lateral movement and variations in acceleration result in a complicated and hard to predict path of travel for such an item as it passes from a sensing region over a significant distance to a sorting region. If the item does not reach the sorting region at the time and location at which it is expected, then the sorting system has failed. The result is that sorting is not being performed in an efficient manner.